Day 5 : Adjusting to the Move

Thank you for joining us for the 12 days of jumping into fall and recovering from summer!!

So who is ready for this hurricane? As a military wife, I have about 20 friends who are in North Carolina, and we are praying with you all!

We live in the D.C. area, so we might be a little affected too. We have a completely dead tree in our front yard. Limbs fall from it regularly. We’re renters, but even still we should probably do something about that. In the meantime, our plan is to have the boys all sleep in the basement with us during the hurricane.

Guess what I did last night.

I stayed up until past midnight working on ancestry research, so today I have the energy level of a “baby momma”, and I’m hating late night April who wanted to stay up so late and follow that genealogy trail.

Why do I live to torture myself?

What is this thing inside of me that says, “Yes!!!! Sign up for ALLLL THE THINGS!!!”

Alan came home last night, and said, “Hey, I noticed you got a lot of volunteer emails today…”

“I did? What did I get?”

Total sign up amnesia is also a thing with me.

“There was one about a field trip to Baltimore. Who would sign up to be a chaperone for that?”

“Me. I did.”

“April, just because the kids went to school doesn’t mean you have to do all this mess because then inevitably it’s going to interfere with all the other kids. Someone will be sick that day. Every time.”

I blinked. I mean I couldn’t argue. That does tend to happen.

“What other emails were there?” I asked him. I mean, sure, I’d replied to them all, but again, I get the sign up amnesia.

“Something about the library…”

“Oh yeah!” I nod enthusiastically. “I’m going to volunteer in the library. So excited.”

Alan looked at me warily.

Alan and I also just joined a local church, and we both know that means we should find a place to serve there. What I want to do now is choir. I’m actually not planning to sign up to teach any other classes this year.

Moving is hard.

Yes. It is hard, even when you’re returning to a place you’ve lived before. My heart is leading me to choir, but the idea of working Awana makes me want to pull my own eyelashes out, so I’m going to wait on that. I need to sit in a Bible study and learn. My pitcher needs a refill.

Then you know what will happen? I will start to relax. Life will start to make sense again, and then I will know where I should serve at church.

People can’t make our sign up decisions for us. We must live proactively and serve in a God-honoring way. Serving because we feel our arm twisted or guilt-tripped is not the kind of service God wants from us. It’s the kind that will allow us to live in dread. Life is short. I’m not interested in living in dread.

So last night was the 2nd week of Awana.

…And AWANA has always caused a great deal of drama, weeping, and gnashing of teeth at our house. The kids do the whining, and I do the teeth grinding.

By the time I get them all to church, I’m doing all I can to not burst into tears, okay. You do not want me to teach a class.

I know that’s hard to imagine if your children have gone to the same church since they were born, and maybe they love AWANA. But that is not our story, y’all.

Church is a place packed with strangers for us every 2 years.

It’s terrifying for some of us. It’s not so scary on Sunday morning because you can sit with your parents, or you can attend a nice Sunday school class with just a few kids your own age, taught by a smiling lady. The boys, while they don’t actually want to go to Sunday school, they always leave there fairly happy. It’s a peaceful place.

Wednesday nights are not so peaceful at all at most churches we’ve gone to for the children. It’s loud and noisy because hundreds of kids who do not attend church on Sunday morning suddenly appear on Wednesday night for AWANA.

Being the new kid + being required to spout out memorized verses +coping with a super loud environment +your teachers are also stressed because of the super loud environment = stress.

Okay. It equals stress. There’s no way around it.

Some years we participate, and some years, it’s too much. This year we are determined to make it, and the youngest has had tears both weeks so far.

Once we get past the initial stress and chaos of it all, their participation in AWANA will make them feel way more connected to our local church and the body of Christ in general, but in the meantime…it’s hard.

The first week I stayed with John David the entire 2 hours because I couldn’t bear watching him walk in that line bawling his little eyes out. Nope. Not doing it. I whisked him into my arms and tagged along for all of their classes.

For week 2, John David did not cry at drop off, so I was free to find a class for myself to attend.

I was barely holding it together, honestly, but I found a quiet room downstairs with a few ladies gathered for a Ladies’ Bible Study. It felt providential.

The group leader asked us to write our information and prayer requests on an index card. My heart was feeling a bit raw, so I spelled out three solid requests, in detail. This is unusual for me. In meeting a new group, I would usually just say that I do not have any prayer requests.

It turns out that two women of the 6 who were there have had an ablation before! Now I’m not actually planning to get an ablation, but I have to go deal with the heart doctors this week. Doctors make me surprisingly nervous. I’m such a medical chicken, but I’m not all that worried about the outcome of the appointment.

I’m more concerned that all of my childcare arrangements will work out and everyone’s okay without me. It was supposed to be storming by this afternoon, but now it’s looking like it won’t be. Thank God for that!

This Bible study group felt like a good fit for me last night.

I needed this, so I’m glad that I didn’t sign up to teach AWANA. You know what I mean? They do need more workers, and I feel bad for them. Maybe next semester I could help, but at this time I need to refill my pitcher. There’s a time for everything, right?

When I picked John David up last night, he melted into tears in my arms. I am his safe place. He’d put on a brave face allll day long, and he was done. I wanted to sit down in the floor and cry with him, but I held him for a few minutes and then gathered my peeps, and we made our way to the ol’ minivan.

You know, moving is hard, and it’s sometimes hard for others to understand, but that’s the place we’re in now. All six of us are going to be fine. No, we’re going to be far better than fine–even stronger and more compassionate for having done all that we’ve done. And this is simply what that process looks like.

There is no magic formula for adjusting to a move. We all have to walk at our own pace. Dive in, but not so hastily that we hit our head on some unexpected log. Observe. Take small steps, but get in there.

A year from now, we’ll find ourselves waving hello to more people. Strangers won’t be strangers anymore. There will be fewer of those. We might even find ourselves giving directions to a newer person. Always give it a year to feel transitioned, but give it two years to love it. Some places take longer than others. This particular place won’t take long at all.

Do you feel like your family is going through an adjustment phase with a new school or new teachers or even a new location like us? We’d love to hear your best coping strategies in the comments section!